The early to middle 1980's were an interesting time in the evolution of the entire microcomputer (personal computer) industry. Up to that time, the main players in personal computer manufacturing and sales were IBM and Apple. While there were others, the market clearly belonged to those two giants, and for the most part, IBM had the edge due to their name and reputation in the computer industry. The "clone wars" were beginning to happen, which changed the entire personal computer industry. The "clone wars" refers to the time when the influx of personal computers into the marketplace that performed just as well as, if not better than genuine IBM personal computers for a fraction of the cost made personal computers available to the mass public for the first time.

The real problem, however, was that "personal computers" were not very user-friendly. When problems occurred, which was not uncommon, support for them was rather limited as the industry was truly in it's infant stages. As a result, I began offering personal computer services to the public in 1985.

In 1986, I took a position as the sole programmer/analyst in the maintenance, engineering, and industrial engineering departments for a major corporation in the St. Louis-Metro East area of Illinois. Part of my job was to design the first PC network in use by that company.

During that project, my company hired an outside consulting firm to assist me, which became my turning point. The men the consulting firm sent in knew very little. I did most of the work, teaching them what was going on as we went. For all intents and purposes, my company paid their company over $100 per hour for me to teach them what they should have known to begin with, a totally ludicrous situation.

I began checking into the computer consulting field, and what I found amazed me. I already knew support was lacking, but the two men I dealt with were like a lot of people in the industry. Many so-called "professional consultants" knew very little about what they were doing and charged customers exorbitant rates to provide them with on-the-job training. What's more, the low level of expertise often caused project time overruns. This translated into extremely high project costs and/or cost overruns so high that many small and medium sized businesses could not afford to computerize.

I concluded the computer industry needed consultants who knew their trade and would charge reasonable rates for services rendered (which I had already been doing "unofficially" since 1985). I decided to quit my job and become an independent consultant when the network project at work was completed, which happened in late 1987. In January 1988 I quit my job and Tillman Computer Services was officially born.

Since then, customers have included individual computer owners as well as private and government sector businesses and organizations ranging from small, home-based businesses with one PC to Department of Defense contractors during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and everything in between.

In a sentence, Tillman Computer Services has covered the entire spectrum of the Personal Computer industry by being involved in projects that have included systems analysis and design, building computers, hardware troubleshooting/repairs, operating systems suppport, network support, custom software development, contract programming, user training, off-the-shelf software evaluations/recommendations, and more.

The primary objective of TCS has always been to provide customers with the highest quality computers and services possible at reasonable rates. That's my personal commitment to customers, whether an individual, or regardless of business and/or project size.

----- Dan Tillman, President